It's about time. After years of iTunes and Amazon selling MP3 songs at prices that are just too darn high it looks like Amazon has seen the light.
Paying $10 plus for a new release in MP3 format that you could by in CD form at Best Buy for $7.99 made no sense. And even $7.99 is too high for an MP3 album.
There's no manufacturing costs, no materials needed. Just storage space, bandwidth and maintenance of the site.
There's been a theory, one I prescribe to, that if the record companies would sell songs for as low as 25 cents then piracy would drop dramatically. People would flock to iTunes and Amazon for other reasons beyond the very reasonable price of 25 cents. The convenience of the slick on line store interface. The hassle of searching for pirated material. The worry of getting a virus or spyware. It would all add up to big revenues. That's how the theory goes anyway.
Now Amazon is showing the way. I just bought the new Kanye West album for $3.99 this morning. Same with new Cee-Lo Green, Kid Cudi and Robyn. A few weeks back I downloaded Taylor Swift's current smash for the same reasonable price. I'm actually giddy about prices like this.
I just looked at iTunes price for the new Kanye. It's $9.99 or $14.99 for the deluxe which includes a digital booklet (which would be cool on an iPad). Come on iTunes those prices are too high.
I use the iTunes software since I have 2 iPods and an iPhone. It's another step to go to Amazon to buy the music but it'll dump those new tracks right into your iTunes library. The songs are also MP3 encoded and not Apple's propriatary encoding. Try transfering Apple song files to different hard drives or get them to play in other players. What a pain in the ass. Whereas doing it with Amazon's MP3's is a breeze.
Do yourselves and all of us a favor. Take advantage of these great Amazon prices and perhaps it'll send a message to Apple.
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